A Parcel Handling Obstacle

A packing sortation conveyor system from L-A-C provides a global leader in the logistics industry with all the automation they need to meet their parcel handling challenge. A global leader in the logistics industry, specialising in international shipping, courier services and transportation has invested in a new packing sortation conveyor system from L-A-C Logistics Automation.

The company, who trade and are recognised on an international scale, offer services including parcel delivery, supply chain management and parcel sorting, needed a new larger building to replace their existing depot. Their new depot had to be equipped with an automated sortation system to meet their new challenges of increased demand. The automated sortation system incorporates a dynamic DWS (Dimension Weigh Scan) system including image capture.

L-A-C’s design team had to consider several factors when putting together the ideal system. They had to be able to accommodate the increased throughput required whilst accommodating for varying sizes, shapes, and weights. In addition, a modular and adaptable approach was needed to be able to meet future scalability and reconfiguration requirements. The variety of packages handled, including irregular shapes, range from as little as 20cm square x 2cm thick up to 120cm long and 80cm tall with weights ranging from 0.5kg up to 30kg.

The solution had to be able to accommodate material arriving and departing from trucks with loose loaded material, cages and pallets and have a throughput more than 2,000 parcels per hour to the delivery vehicles.

The DWS system provided a fully automated pre-sort to and from the courier vans and incorporated a rework area for those items identified by the host system as requiring manual intervention.

The overall solution offers a clever configuration of L-A-C standard conveyor solutions. Therefore, the conveyor system includes the following conveyor elements: line shaft conveyor, 90-degree roller conveyor bends with underslung AC motors, belt conveyors and incline belt conveyors, Ro7 driven motorized roller conveyors, belt under roller conveyors, Post and Parcel switch sorters, walkways, platforms, and flooring for easy access around the system. Likewise, the DWS system, with 5 sided omni directional barcode reading (laser based), LFT dimensioning, and scale used for parcel identification.